


run through the jungle

by SlowMercury



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: Danzo is mostly not physically present but is there in spirit, Gen, Gen Work, Missions, Missions Gone Wrong, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-04
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-19 11:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22110277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury
Summary: Sai is on a mission with two other ROOT agents in the Land of Lightning.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 222
Collections: Dreaming of Sunshine Exchange 2019 B, Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection





	run through the jungle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Unorganized_Shelf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unorganized_Shelf/gifts).



Ever since Sai was deemed an acceptable teammate by Uzumaki Naruto and Nara Shikako, and from there gradually infiltrated the inner circle of the upcoming generation of promising ninja, the so-called Rookie Nine, Danzo has mostly stopped assigning Sai long term missions away from the village. That way, Danzo has at least a small chance to insert a spy into whatever the clan heirs’ latest mission was.

Sai is not inside the village now, since Danzo had decided Sai’s skills were necessary for the current mission. Not even Danzo’s best efforts to make his ninja into interchangeable tools can fix the problem of differing elemental chakra natures and the sheer native ability to learn the various types of techniques require, so Sai is returning from an assassination in the Land of Lightning with two fellow ROOT agents. By ROOT standards, the mission was a complete success — the target was killed on schedule, and in exact accordance with Danzo’s instructions. 

Sai cannot help but disapprove. Not of the mission, exactly; the merchant they killed was a major supplier of metal and rice for Cloud, and the ROOT ninja have subtly implicated Rock in her death. Konoha is likely to significantly benefit from the negative impact this will cause to Cloud’s war efforts. But they’d had to kill two witnesses, and one of Sai’s squad was injured. If ROOT ninja were permitted to make field evaluations and decisions based on how best to solve problems instead of only how best to please Danzo, Sai knows they could have avoided the collateral damage _and_ the injury. (Sai also knows that before his first mission with Naruto and Shikako, these ideas would not have occurred to him either.)

Here and now, they are running towards the northern stretch of Lightning’s border with Frost. The problem is that they are not running fast enough to keep Danzo’s schedule — they are supposed to meet up with an informant in the Land of Iron in five days, and they are not going to make it if they don’t pick up the pace.

They can’t pick up the pace with their squad mate hurt. 

Standard ROOT protocol dictates that if an agent cannot complete the mission, that agent must be discarded. Sai himself has never disposed of a teammate, but he has been present on numerous occasions when other ROOT agents did. He has even been present twice when ROOT agents disposed of themselves. 

Sai watches tension gather in the shoulders of the injured agent. She must be a relatively new graduate; older ROOT agents have those sorts of tells suppressed or trained out of them or they don’t survive. Like this one won’t.

It’s a waste. Her stealth is remarkable even for ROOT, and she’s quick and precise with her senbon. Given a little time to mature, her skills could be truly impressive. She shouldn’t have had to get hurt in the first place, and now it’s the end. 

Danzo’s rules are clear. Sai signals for a halt.

They draw to a standstill at the foot of a hill under a rock formation which blocks them from view on three sides. Their third squad mate knows some earth jutsu. No one will notice a corpse here for weeks, maybe months. The injured ROOT agent is shivering openly now, but she stays as silent as Sai and their third squad mate. 

Sai hesitates. Then, instead of reaching for his kunai, he grabs his scroll and ink. Sai draws a tiger. It leaps at his injured teammate, picks up her shirt in its teeth, and throws her onto its back. 

“You are delaying the mission,” Sai says. “You will ride until you have recovered sufficiently to keep pace and continue the mission.”

The injured ROOT agent stops shaking out of sheer shock. The other agent doesn’t reveal any tells, but Sai knows he is as surprised and astonished as their ROOT training allows them to be. Neither agent comments aloud and the ROOT team begins to run again, this time at a speed that will allow them to make their appointment in Iron.

Sai’s own heartbeat is fast, faster than the increase in exertion can account for. This is a risk. If Sai uses too much chakra helping his injured squad mate evade ROOT regulations and Danzo hears about it, Sai will be punished. In the worst case scenario, Danzo will weigh Sai’s value as a skilled ninjutsu user and spy against his willful violation of orders and criminally soft heart and conclude that a disobedient tool is a worthless one; if that happens, Sai will be executed.

One of these agents could report him to Danzo; it might even be the one who’s injured who turns him in. Sai knows firsthand how pervasive ROOT indoctrination is, and how hard it can be to imagine even bending the rules. But Sai also knows that sometimes things, sometimes _people_ , are more important than regulations — Shikako and Naruto and even Kiba taught him that. 

Sai’s _friends_ , they’ve showed him a different way to live: they laugh and they cry, they question their orders and they chatter incessantly and they’ll blatantly ignore commands; they love their comrades and friends and families. They fight for each other. Sometimes they’ll even fight for strangers. 

Sai wants to be like his friends, he wants to be the kind of person who won’t just let someone die if he could prevent it. Sai doesn’t want to be someone who has nothing — is nothing — but loyalty for the mission anymore. And it’s dangerous and frightening and it’s almost impossible for Sai to tell what the right thing to do is at any given moment, especially because he can’t just fall back on Danzo’s rules to tell him what to do when he’s uncertain. 

These ROOT agents aren’t Sai’s friends. They aren’t his comrades either, for all that they belong to the same fanatically loyal black ops division. If anything, these ROOT agents are strangers.

But Sai has learned that sometimes you should take a risk for other people, even when you don’t know them, even when you know they’re likely to betray you. Shikako did it — _does_ it —for him. She knows he’s spying on her for Danzo, and so she is cautious with Sai in a way she isn’t with her other friends, but she has _never_ let that prevent her from reaching out to him.

His ROOT squad mates might betray him to Danzo, but they might not. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith and hope for the best.

These two agents aren’t Sai’s comrades yet, but maybe they could be. 

After the mission is completed, the ROOT squad returns to Konoha. When they kneel before Danzo to report, Sai recounts the successful assassination of the merchant in Lightning and then repeats the information passed along by Danzo’s contact in Iron. Sai does not mention the injury his teammate received or how he assisted her when she was unable to perform to expectations.

He waits for the other ROOT agents to speak up and reveal his treacherous weakness to Danzo, but they remain stoic and silent behind him until Danzo dismisses them.


End file.
